Barack Obama will forever be a historic, as well as historical, figure in American life. The 44th U.S. president, yes, but more noteworthy, he will forever be the first African-American to lead a nation riven through centuries by racial and ethnic division.

His election in November 2008 inspired. Even those who may not have supported him could not deny the significance.

With it came an optimism that the ideals he stressed as a candidate, like a post-partisan Washington where Democrats and Republicans worked together, were within reach. He took office amid great turmoil, a crashing economy and two wars atop his priorities.

Candidate Obama, an orator of great skill and cadence, might have overcome everything and put the U.S. on a brighter path. President Obama, unfortunately, fell short of the challenge. The wars have largely faded from headlines, but the economic struggles remain, along with an attendant worry about future federal spending, deficits and debt.

Obama’s Democratic supporters would argue that no one could have succeeded in what he inherited, that the nation’s problems were far more severe than anyone could handle in four years.

We respectfully disagree. On the central issue that will define his presidency — a stalled U.S. economy weighed down by crushing annual deficits and accumulated debt — Obama showed himself to be less leader than follower. While he expended his political capital on new government programs, unemployment stayed at debilitating heights.

For that reason, this newspaper recommends Republican challenger Mitt Romney for president.

We see evidence of Obama’s shortcomings in his re-election campaign, a relentlessly negative push to disqualify his opponent instead of standing on his accomplishments. His campaign has worn voters’ patience thin by constantly blaming predecessor George W. Bush for “the mess he left behind.”

Cleaning up that mess, however large, was what Americans trusted to Obama.

Romney had to survive a fractious primary by steering too far right on some issues. At his core, however, we see him as a “Chamber of Commerce Republican,” more attuned to business interests than the tea party/social conservatism that defines today’s GOP.

Importantly, Romney speaks the language of industry. His tenure leading Bain Capital, for instance, has come under sharp criticism for years, but it also reveals a man who understands capital formation and how that, extrapolated through an economy, can lift the U.S. from its stalled state. Even some of Obama’s Democratic allies — notably rising star Cory Booker, former adviser Steven Rattner and former Rep. Harold Ford — were quick to criticize the campaign’s Bain-centric attacks on profit.

Unlike many in his party, Romney understands that government has a place in the economy and in American life, just not as much of a place as Obama would afford it.

Obama has cited, with some justification, recalcitrance from congressional Republicans for thwarting him. But in his first two years, when Democrats had a wide margin in the House and filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Obama’s wounds were self-inflicted. He put his chips on a necessary but ill-conceived stimulus program and a massive health care overhaul. Left to languish were a broad-based energy bill, comprehensive immigration reform, entitlement reform and, most ominously, effective job-creation programs.

Obama’s people warned of unemployment rates as high as 8 percent without the stimulus spending, only to see rates exceed 8 percent, anyway, for 43 consecutive months — and counting. Real household income has fallen in consecutive years. Food stamp enrollment has hit record highs; the percentage of adults in the workforce approaches record lows.

Annual deficits for every year of the Obama presidency will top $1 trillion, pushing the federal debt past an astounding $16 trillion.

Obama’s Affordable Care Act was his signature domestic achievement. Its many laudable features included the individual mandate, but one was not its financing, which led this newspaper to oppose it. Obama left the details to Congress, and what emerged had no realistic funding stream and did too little to contain future costs.

Of most concern, Obama was not unaware of the fiscal problem. He put together a bipartisan panel to help forge a solution but then abandoned it. Left to languish, the Simpson-Bowles group could not achieve the votes to force congressional action. The proposal, which included a roughly 3-to-1 package of spending cuts to revenue increases, was the kind of compromise candidate Obama had advocated. As president, he chose not to act.

Romney has shown an ability to lead, from turning around the deficit-ridden 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics to his term as Massachusetts governor. His plans for tax and entitlement reform are encouraging, shifting the focus from government first to freeing the private sector to innovate. Voters should demand more specifics, but at the heart of his plans — especially on reforming a teetering Medicare system — is an instinct to rely on competition over regulation to drive growth.

Yet Romney does give us pause. His famed flip-flops on issues from immigration to health care, always pushing further right, are worrisome. His difficulty in speaking precisely and inoffensively on such issues as London’s Olympic preparedness, Israeli Palestinian issues and U.S. embassy assaults paint him, at best, as a foreign policy neophyte.

And his secretly recorded comments at a Boca Raton, Fla., fundraiser drew an unreasonably sharp line between those who pay income taxes and “the 47 percent” of Americans who only take and would never support him, anyway. These ill-advised statements offended many and played directly into the Obama campaign’s picture of an excessively wealthy candidate out of touch with the common man.

Not his finest moment, nor was it the lone defining one for Romney. What we’ve seen of him over many years — from business success to running a state to impeccable personal and family attributes — convinces this newspaper that the time is right for someone with his broad skill set.

Obama himself once said that if he didn’t repair the economy “in three years, this would be a one-term proposition.” The facts show it’s time for a principled, pragmatic leader who can get Washington working again.